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How to pray
that God hears |
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From my book
Encounter with Life |
When it comes to the prayer, a general opinion is
that God may or may not hear our prayer and that it is God’s
prerogative to answer or not to answer. This may be partially
true but definitely this is not the whole truth.
Remember, He is a just God and will not lie or cheat or break
His promise or turn from His own Word. He does not back-off from
his word. God has expressed his attitude and character in the
Bible. Let us see what it says about it. In the book of Jeremiah
29:12 –
“Then you will call upon me and come
and pray to me, and I will listen to you.”
New Testament confirms God’s promises of Old Testament in
various scriptures. Jesus also said in Matthew 7:7 (and Luke
11:9) –
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek
and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”
At continues to say in verse 11, “If you, then, though you are
evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much
more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask
him!”
Yet again in Matthew 18:19 –
“Again, I tell you that if two of you
on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for
you by my Father in heaven.”
And then in Matthew 21:22 –
“If you believe, you will receive
whatever you ask for in prayer.”
In Mark 11:24 –
“Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask
for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be
yours.”
Our God is Alpha (beginning) and the Omega (end) Revelation 1:8,
who changes not and remains same yesterday, today and forever
(Hebrews 13:8), who is holy (1 Peter 1:16; Leviticus 11:44,45,
19:2, 20:7) and perfect (Deuteronomy 32:4, 2Samuel 22:31).
if we know Jesus and His nature, we know God and we can rest
assured that he answers, always. Need of the hour is that we
must tune ourselves to be able to hear that answer. Very often
we use the tuning process to listen to our favourite channels in
radio or watch programs in television; it is as simple as that.
We need to tune our mind to listen His still small voice.
If our prayers are not heard by God or we do not hear answers
from Him there has to be a reason. The reason is not God’s
carelessness but our unbelief (or perhaps belief on wrong person
or wrong way). I have seen many people blaming God while the
mistake is their own.
For us to be able to stand on God’s promises and claim them for
ourselves and receive our blessings, we need to meet certain
conditions and also need several most important ingredients in
our prayers.
The condition to be met before we pray so that God may hear and
answer our prayer are to abide in the ways of the Lord as
instructed in His Word that is fully tuned for hearing the rhema
(the living and spoken voice in our hearts) word of God, leading
a sinless life and asking according to His will which is
manifested broadly in His Word – The Bible.
If we pray specifically, he answers specifically. If we pray
vague, it is very likely that we might miss to see the blessing
of God as an answer to our prayer. Moreover, praying specific
prayers need God’s faith in us which is the most important key
to an answered prayer.
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"Come unto
me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I
will give you rest. "
[Matthew
11:28] |
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